Having children a new right for accommodation in the workplace? What do you think??
- Thread starter Goober
- Start date
The long and short of it is.... telling an employee you're turning down their request for shifts because you don't respect their 'decision' to have children they need to consider, is a **** thing for ANY employer to do, and likely to get you marched before a labour tribunal if not the HRC as well.
There's a huge difference between 'we can't', and 'we won't'.
There's a huge difference between 'we can't', and 'we won't'.
So they could tell her to piss up a rope because they didn't like her or she had a bad attitude but not because she couldn't find a babysitter in the GTA? Seems to me like it's a wonderful standard....NOT!:roll:
You've gone from daycares to now sitters. You know your work can't ask you to leave your kids with unlicensed strangers, right?
Seriously, read the decision. You wind up looking silly. She was willing to work evenings. She was asking for 3 shifts, each 12 hours, rotating. She is not the only single parent working at Customs even! They made this exact accommodation for the others, why not her? Their stated reason: because of her family status.
She was willing to go quite far. The employer was not required to accommodate her, but the employer chose to discriminate against her. She was asking to be treated exactly like other employees, and they chose not to because of her family status.
Do you not see the difference? If I say to my boss, "Give me a raise," and my boss says, "No, you don't deserve it," then there is no problem. However, if my boss says instead, "No, you are black," then it is discrimination. This boss chose to say, "No, you have children."
They could say many things, something as simple as, "We do not make accomodations," but they were already making accommodations. Once you start making accommodations, the only way to not make an accommodation for someone is for the request to be genuinely spurious, to be unable to because so many other people have been accommodated, or to have a genuine policy in place listing the acceptable reasons and to follow that policy. You cannot use family status as the reason. They chose to forego allowable ways out of accommodating the woman and chose to discriminate based on family status.
But they can ask you to show up for the shifts THEY assign and have cause to discipline/fire you if you don't make it.
Yes they most certainly can. Any business can.
What they can't do is tell Ted he can work 3 12 hour shifts in a week for whatever reason he had, and then turn around and tell you that your children are not enough of a reason to even try to accommodate you as well.
Sorry Karrie, I'm not trying to be purposely thick, but I don't see that, I only see this "Management, citing pre-existing policy, refused."
okay, because that's all I could find as well... they went by policy which means it was already on the books.
Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Document
[30] There is no dispute that CBSA has an unwritten policy that anyone seeking accommodation in order to care for children may be accommodated by being given static shifts, but must also go to part-time hours to a maximum of 34 hours per week. This unwritten policy does not allow employees to have static shifts with full-time hours if the reason for the request is childcare responsibilities.
[31] There is also no dispute that CBSA has and does accommodate employees for medical and religious reasons by giving them static shifts with full-time hours, from time to time, for varying lengths of time, and for some on a permanent basis. These requests are assessed on an individual needs basis, and in the case of medical accommodation CBSA requires medical substantiation of the request. There are also instances of employees having been accommodated because they have children with medical needs.
[32] Further, there was no dispute that this unwritten policy is applied unevenly. There are CBSA employees working part-time at 36 hours per week, employees working full-time static shifts, and others who have been allowed - although part-time - to maintain the equivalent of full-time pension and benefit entitlements. Although two of CBSA's management witnesses stated that CBSA wanted to discourage these anomalies, both conceded that these exceptions do continue to exist.
[30] There is no dispute that CBSA has an unwritten policy that anyone seeking accommodation in order to care for children may be accommodated by being given static shifts, but must also go to part-time hours to a maximum of 34 hours per week. This unwritten policy does not allow employees to have static shifts with full-time hours if the reason for the request is childcare responsibilities.
[31] There is also no dispute that CBSA has and does accommodate employees for medical and religious reasons by giving them static shifts with full-time hours, from time to time, for varying lengths of time, and for some on a permanent basis. These requests are assessed on an individual needs basis, and in the case of medical accommodation CBSA requires medical substantiation of the request. There are also instances of employees having been accommodated because they have children with medical needs.
[32] Further, there was no dispute that this unwritten policy is applied unevenly. There are CBSA employees working part-time at 36 hours per week, employees working full-time static shifts, and others who have been allowed - although part-time - to maintain the equivalent of full-time pension and benefit entitlements. Although two of CBSA's management witnesses stated that CBSA wanted to discourage these anomalies, both conceded that these exceptions do continue to exist.
This isn't about working times in the day or evening, this is about one individual that is forcing an entire company and it's employees to conform to her individual wishes under the guise of 'discrimination'
Apparently she wasn't that willing as she went to the HRC to force her individual will over everyone else.
As far as this lady being discriminated against, the logic baffles me as the HRC's actions on behalf of the new mother, effectively discriminates against a large population of employees in that company... In teh end, exactly how effective was the ruling(s)?
I have no idea how you come with the racial analogy that you've used, an individual can not make a specific decision to change or choose the color of their skin, but they can make the decision to start a family.... And this is what this issue really comes down to; she made a decision to start a family. She was already working at Customs, she knew the policies/practices prior to having a child. Yet here she is, after the fact, forcing the company to accommodate her individual needs while the remainder of the employee base will be forced to alter their schedules just to make things work
what if I owned a company with 100 employee, of which 70 have young children, and I want to change my facility to a 24hour facility?
If I wanted to have 4 crews of 25 employees, 4 days work, 4 days off, 12hr day shift, 12 night shift.
Obviously, if it is possible to accomodate a few employees, but I do not think it is possible to accomodate all 70 employees....in order to do so, I would need to split the other 30 employees into 2 steady night shifts, hire another 20 people for a steady night shift, which means I would have to lay off 20 of the parents to accomodate the remaining 50 parents.
this gets messy and confusing in one hell of a hurry doesn't it
If I wanted to have 4 crews of 25 employees, 4 days work, 4 days off, 12hr day shift, 12 night shift.
Obviously, if it is possible to accomodate a few employees, but I do not think it is possible to accomodate all 70 employees....in order to do so, I would need to split the other 30 employees into 2 steady night shifts, hire another 20 people for a steady night shift, which means I would have to lay off 20 of the parents to accomodate the remaining 50 parents.
this gets messy and confusing in one hell of a hurry doesn't it
Accommodate what you can, plain and simple. And then tell the people you can't accommodate that you CAN'T accommodate them. Just don't tell them that you WON'T accommodate them because they 'chose' to have kids, and then drop them to part time, while accommodating religion and other issues and keeping those people at full time.
Go read the full decision and all the findings from the court (I shared the link). It's not what people here are trying to make it out to be.
Not just here.... the media at large are completely misrepresenting it too. 'Parents can now set their own schedules by law' and stuff like that.
It's a different world today Cap't (and has been headed that way since the 80s). Back in the day when you got a job you kept your mouth and worked as hard as you could so the boss wouldn't replace you. The employer made the decisions. There was no such thing as "discrimination" -
It beats me why people persist in working at a job they don't like.Well in Ontario, it's because they have run our province into such an unbelieveable debt load and destroyed the economy with their spend now who cares attitude and the jobs are few and far between. And if we don't rein ourselves in we are screwed three ways to Sunday. I don't care who did it, we need to fix it whether we like the hours or not.
I think that's where my who cares attitude comes with this woman. Wait until there is not job to go to, then see her run to the HRC.